Peasants in Franconia

Peasants in Franconia During the first half of the nineteenth
century, Franconia was still very much an agricultural society. In
lower Franconia, which lagged behind middle and upper Franconia in
its economic development, some 75% of the population were to some
degree dependent on agriculture for their livelihood in 1852: 28%
were full-time farmers, 27% day laborers, and another 20% combined
agriculture with a craft. Only 19% of the population were employed
exclusively in commerce or the crafts, a ratio not very different
from that in 1814. Peasant holdings were widely dispersed and
characterized by sometimes minuscule units, the result of the
centuries-old practice of partible inheritance. Fields were still
planted in the traditional three field system, and as late as mid-century, plows did not go deeper
than four or five inches. Of the newly available crops, only potatoes were planted in any significant
amount, while wine, the traditional cash crop, suffered from a
severe reduction in sales. Population growth was slow: some 19.4%
only between 1818 and 1848 in lower Franconia, 23.1% and 29.5% in
middle and upper Franconia respectively. In a stagnating economy,
many saw emigration as the only viable alternative. Some 13,000
people left the three regions (Regierungsbezirke)
between 1835 and 1856 alone, some 44.6% from lower Franconia.

Change came slowly to this society, though not necessarily because
of peasant resistance--the legal and institutional framework of the
state impeded change as well. To be true, servitude, the serfdom
(Leibeigenschaft), had been abolished in the
Kingdom of Bavaria in 1808. Franconian serfs had to wait until a decree of
July 24, 1818, as the area had been part of the Grand-Duchies of
Würzburg and Aschaffenburg in 1808. These reforms granted
some 5% of the population their personal freedom and abolished all
obligations of a personal nature. But they did not address the
issue of Grundlasten, obligations of connected with
the ownership of real estate, such as unpaid labor services, the
unpaid service obligations ( Fron), noble hunting and
grazing rights, which often made consolidation of holdings
impossible, and the tithe, still often collected in kind, which
forced peasants to time their harvest to the schedule of the tithe
collector. The patrimonial privileges
(Patrimonialgerichtsherrschaften) of former imperial
estates in northern Franconia were not only an important source of
income for the local nobility, which insisted on its right to local
justice (Gerichtsgefälle), but, more importantly,
a place where justice was dispensed, not always impartially, by an
employee of the local lord.

As the peasantry addressed these issues after 1818, which were just
odious to them as servitude had been, they did not normally resort
to force but rather used the legal system in an attempt to wear the
opposition down. This route was not only taken by Winterhausen, a
community of some 1,100 people on the river Main just south of
Würzburg and part of the Patrimonialgerichtsherrschaft
of the Grafen Rechteren-Limpurg, but by dozens
of communities all over northern Bavaria.
In 1825, the Landtag had passed a law permitting the
fixing and redemption of Grundlasten through cash
payments. Consequently in November 1827, the peasants of
Winterhausen refused not the payment, which would have been
illegal, but the collection and delivery of the
Weingält, the ground rent for their vineyards,
due that year. In May 1828, they refused to provide a letter
carrier, a Fronbote, to pick up the count's mail or
to deliver the circulars of the local minister. They challenged
the obligation in court, and won a first victory when the high
court (Oberappellationsgericht) in Munich decided on
July 20, 1829 that the Graf Rechteren had to prove his right to
demand these services. When a court in Würzburg decided in
June 1832 that the village indeed had an obligation to provide the
Fronbote, the community responded in August 1833 with
an offer to fix all unpaid labor services, i.e., the Handfron,
Spannfron, Jagdfron, Botenfron, Baufron, collection of
Weingült, the making of firewood, dispersing of
manure on the fields etc. In June 1834 Graf Rechteren rejected the
offer and another court case began. In 1837, the special tax
liquidations commission fixed the value of all labor services at
143 fl, even though the community itself had offered to redeem them
at 216 fl in 1833.

Not surprisingly, Winterhausen now challenged the findings of the
commission and managed to stall the fixing of obligations for the
next ten years. In the spring of 1847, a new court case began,
which was not yet decided by the time news of events in Munich
reached the village. Sensing the victory, a town meeting was
called on a Sunday afternoon and a list of grievances compiled.
Under the leadership of a tailor named Vial, the villagers
presented the list to Major General Graf Friedreich Ludwig von
Rechteren-Limpurg, commanding officer of the Landwehr
in lower Franconia, hereditary member of the Bavarian
Reichsrat etc. etc. The local policeman, sent to stop
the crowd, had his broken sword thrown at his feet in a gesture of
utter disdain, signifying more than anything else the demise of the
old authorities. Graf Friedreich promised at once to grant what he
had fought to preserve in court for twenty years. Victorious, the
peasants went home again. The revolution was over.

But not everywhere did the revolution pass so peacefully. In the
mountainous areas of upper Franconia and on the sandy plains around
Nürnburg, the peasantry was worse off then in lower Franconia and
quite prepared to take matters into their own hands. Dissatisfied
with the laws on June 4, 1848, as they did not grant them the right
to hunt, to cut wood freely, nor abolish the tithe, they put a few
castles of the nobility to the torch in the fall of 1848.
Knowingly or not, they interpreted the freedom from paying taxes
(pressen= the paying of taxes), which led to
additional conflicts with the state.

Anti-nobility, anti-church, and anti-Munich feelings were strong in
the Protestant enclaves of middle Franconia, where some 58.5% of
the land had been under theGrundherrschaft before
1848. Democratic elements in particular encouraged these
sentiments by suggesting that it was the church and the nobility
with their large landholdings which opposed the division of
estates, the abolition of the tithe, and especially the
introduction of a new hunting law, which empowered communities to
auction off hunting rights on the commons. Their agitation paid
off in the elections of November 1848. During the spring of 1849,
democrats again adopted the demands of the peasantry, outside and
parallel to the campaign for the demands of the peasantry, outside
and parallel to the campaign for the constitution. Through the
Märzvereine democrats were able to achieve to a
considerable degree the politicization of the rural population,
which was again reflected in the elections for
the Landtag in July 1849, where democrats were returned
in large numbers. But even here the revolutionary fervor ebbed
quickly in the summer if 1849 after the abolition of the tithe and
the passage of a new hunting law. Thousands of Prussian troops,
ready for action just across the border, contributed their share in
keeping upper Franconia, and thus all of northern Bavaria, quiet.

The peasants of Franconia were not revolutionaries. Once the
limited demands of the peasantry had been met in the summer of
1848, their political interests were exhausted and the rural areas
dropped out of the revolutionary movement. With few exceptions,
the laws of June 4, 1848, abolishing the Grundlasten,
Patrimonialgerichtsherrschaften and Gerichtsgefälle,
simply legalized concessions
which had been wrung from the nobility in the preceding months and
years. By accepting the inevitable, the government in Munich
skillfully pacified the largest, and potentially most dangerous,
segment of the population, as events in the Palatinate and, to a
lesser degree in upper Franconia, had shown. But as neither the
democratic agitators nor the peasantry wanted or dared to leave the
foundation of the law, as was signaled in their participation in
the elections of July 1849, here too the specter of a genuine
social revolution was more imaginary than real. Some work still
needed to be done though: in April 1849, the tithe was abolished,
and grazing rights on alien ground were rescinded in 1852. Some of
the last legal obstacles to modernization were removed by the
Arrondierungsgesetz of 1861, which provided a legal
basis for consolidating the widely scattered holdings.
Robert Selig